Capital Punishment: Should the Death Penalty Still Exist In A 'Civilised Society'?

But it's not because I respect the sanctity of life or some bullshit. Human beings are ultimately expendable, probably more so than other mammals. But giving the federal government that kind of power? Ultimate DUD.

This is one cause I'd probably march for. It's a deeply flawed (and proven so!) system - biased, cruel and barbaric.

Being 'civilised' has nothing to do with it. It's common sense. Don't make me quote that overused "First they came for the Jews..."

Well, the perversely more amusing (?) thing is that Allawi and crew just reinstated the death penalty in Iraq, so smiles all around!

The death penalty as such is an abomination.

Killing people is a-ok so long as the government doesn't do it?

right. which is why study after shows that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime.

NOT.

Plus, as a system, it's 'racist,' etc etc etc

this is one of the scariest things that i've read. look around the next time you're out in public.

Putting emotions aside (always difficult in this debate), the death penalty does not serve any interest of the state that could not be better served through other means.

The state has an interest in preventing heinous criminals from continuing to commit crimes. But that interest can be equally well served through life imprisonment. The death of the criminal provides no added benefit.

The state has an interest in promoting justice. No system can ensure perfect justice. Given that we know our justice must necessarily be imperfect, the best remedy requires that all mistakes, when discovered, must be corrected. The very nature of the death penalty thwarts this requirement.

The state does not have an interest in promoting revenge. Revenge does not provide any tangible benefits to the state or anyone else. The fact that certain people connected to the crime declare a sense of satisfaction or relief at the death of the criminal is of very doubtful benefit, even to those who seek it, and a sense of satisfaction or relief are not sufficient ends to justify taking life.

x-post

"The death of the criminal provides no added benefit."

except financial. Just playing Devil's advocate here, but it costs taxpayers a lot of money to keep a 19 year old prisoner alive for that long.

some people deserve it

especially very fat people

ugh, they're so gross

One nice thing about money is that it can be measured with great accuracy. It should therefore be possible to compare average costs per inmate between death penalty states and non-death penalty states to get a handle on which approach is more expensive and by how much. Just guessing is not a good approach.

If mere cost-effectiveness turns out to be the strongest and best reason for the state to execute certain prisoners, I think that would be a good indicator of just how weak the practical argument in favour of capital punishment is.

Then how come every European government is still in charge of things? In Finland the death penalty isn't lawful even during wartime.

Why is there the death penalty in USA but not UK? Does mainland Europe have it?

The EU regulations say that a member state cannot have the death penalty, so none of the EU countries have it. I'm pretty sure it's same with most of the non-EU countries, though some Eastern European countries, like Belarussia, probably still have it.

are you being funny?

It doesn't?

maybe im being a bit too Hobbsian, but since i think anarchy is untenable there needs to be strong (read: effective) means for enforcing order. what means are "moral" (by what definition?) or reasonable is i suppose what the death penalty debate is all about. i dont think the death penalty really meets any needs that U.S. in particular has, and should therefore be abolished.

I find it slightly disturbing that you rate the threat to order over the threat to human life.

and i tend to see the threat to order as a threat to human life.

I'm pessemistic too. We'll more than likely blow ourselves up/iredeemibly poison our environment/regress to a new dark age before we achieve a post-scarcity anarchistic society. But that doesn't mean it's untenable, and that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue to strive for it.

As for the order/human life thing, it's very easy for a government to justify an atrocity by saying it was to maintain order. Remember Tianiman Square.

hmm

well, if one wishes to argue that a life of strict confinement must necessarily to be viewed as a form of torture, then one must plausibly account for such instances, because... they exist.

there's the aspect of consent.

yes. and consent is important to the overall experience of confinement and I would never describe involuntary confinement as anything but a punishment. But as I read Mordy's description ("horrific, and never-ending torment"), it seems necessary to explain why anyone would view a similar state of confinement differently enough to consent to it. iow, if one accepts one's existential condition as confinement, then that condition may not necessarily be experienced as horrific, and never-ending torment.

As I understand it, very long term prisoners (25 years or more) who are finally released often feel less comfortable in their newfound freedom than they did in prison, largely because they adapted to and accepted what Mordy believes must always be a horrific, and never-ending torment.

Disgraced spiritual teacher Bo Lozoff, who taught meditation in prisons, alluded to this idea of existential confinement in the title of his book We're All Doing Time.

I had to look to see how Lozoff disgraced himself. It doesn't seem like his idea of existential confinement was connected to it, unless his book advocated sexual and psychological abuse as a concomitant to the proper running of a halfway house.

yes. and consent is important to the overall experience of confinement and I would never describe involuntary confinement as anything but a punishment. But as I read Mordy's description ("horrific, and never-ending torment"), it seems necessary to explain why anyone would view a similar state of confinement differently enough to consent to it. iow, if one accepts one's existential condition as confinement, then that condition may not necessarily be experienced as horrific, and never-ending torment.

― Respectfully Yours, (Aimless), Friday, December 11, 2020 1:21 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think it's fairly plain that the consensual aspect completely alters the nature of confinement, so you're no longer talking about the same experience, even if they are superficially similar. it may be added that the superficial similarity is heavy on the superficial. the atmosphere in a monastery is a lot more congenial than that of a maximum security prison's death row, the access to the outside less limited - I am picturing the cistercians frolicking in the alpine snow in the documentary "into great silence", the labour often satisfyingly artisan. not a lot of solitary confinement, violence, 1 hour in the yard per day, beating by guards, rape, etc. going on in abbeys.

more congenial than that of a maximum security prison's death row, the access to the outside less limited

I agree. But neither Mordy nor I have stipulated such lifetime confinement occurring on death row. If there is no death penalty, there is no death row. Nor have we included maximum security, solitary confinement, or other such qualifications in the discussion of life sentences. Mordy's position was that life sentence was in itself enough to merit the description of "some kind of existential state of nothingness" that was a torture worse than death. I disagreed with that.

The inhumanity of the various deprivations that are currently practiced in our prison system should each be considered according to their own lack of merit and I think most of them should be abolished, along with many other features of our penal system. But just as it is possible to eliminate the death penalty as part of that overhaul, many of those practices ought to be abolished or curtailed and the prison populations reduced by more than half, too.

Mordy's argument in favor of death as being the more humane and less cruel alternative to life imprisonment just doesn't convince me.

So when he said he was in favour of executing Dylann Roof you think he was being humane?

He thought so. Not me.

I agree. But neither Mordy nor I have stipulated such lifetime confinement occurring on death row. If there is no death penalty, there is no death row. Nor have we included maximum security, solitary confinement, or other such qualifications in the discussion of life sentences. Mordy's position was that life sentence was in itself enough to merit the description of "some kind of existential state of nothingness" that was a torture worse than death. I disagreed with that.

I goofed by mentioning death row - obviously not relevant to the discussion - but if we're talking about theoretical jail that doesn't exist and isn't as shitty as the actual maximum security jails murderers and the like inhabit in North America then that obviously changes the conversation and I would assume that it is unlikely that any interlocutor on the subject would have been considering a platonic ideal of humane imprisonment when weighing the two things.

(xp) I don't believe he did.

Or if he did that was only part of the reason why he supported his execution.

Just to clarify, jiv, would you consider life imprisonment, even in the current wretched and cruel USA prison system to be less humane and therefore less preferable than swift execution by whatever means you might name? Or does working to eliminate the death penalty and then to improve the prison system in the direction of that elusive "platonic ideal of humane imprisonment" sound like the more humane alternative to you?

to be clear I think the death penalty is bad. but it does have to be judged on the actual merits of the current alternative that society offers, which is also "inhumane"

Or if he did that was only part of the reason why he supported his execution.

Fine. But if it was "part of the reason", then you are saying he thought it was more humane, which is also what I said. More to the point, Mordy directly said this was his position I quoted him saying it just a bit further upthread, though the quoted post was not directly in reference to Dylann Roof.

to be clear I think the death penalty is bad. but it does have to be judged on the actual merits of the current alternative that society offers, which is also "inhumane"

that is clear in one sense, but "it is bad" doesn't quite answer the question I asked, which is about relative merits, not absolute merit. but it's fine if you'd prefer not to take a position on that.

It's bad and I am against it. I've never lived anywhere with the death penalty (technically it was still on the books for treason in the uk until 1998 but no one had been tried for treason during my lifetime) or where it may have a chance of being reintroduced, so it's not something I tend to think i need to be clear on my objection to, sort of like being against witch trials

i think of the witch trials as a relatively enlightened time

people of various theories faced off against each other, each being expected to provide evidence and logic. the evidence and logic was corrupted, of course, but the overall expectation of its soundness was still there. plus, no one brushed their teeth. it was better

in the end, we all get the death penalty

https://myhero.com/content/images/thumbs/0038187_bob-marley.jpeg

maybe the point of living is...to make your death penalty unjust?

:D

Oklahoma governor actually commuted a death sentence for a man who was scheduled to die today.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/18/1056753071/activists-call-on-oklahoma-governor-to-stop-julius-jones-execution

pure fucking evil

yeah, I've never seen the point, but knowing what we know now about tainted jury pools and withheld evidence... just makes no sense whatsoever

always evil

^^^^^

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/26/iwao-hakamada-acquitted-murder-japan-death-row

looks like a judge granted a reprieve in the TX case (Robert Roberson)... from everything I've read about this case, it's just insane it got this close (again)

they're torturing christa pike in tennessee

if the state insists on its right to kill its own citizens maybe it should have the nerve to use a guillotine

It's horrible and grim. The whole deathwatch the last month has been awful, along with the endless recounting of the crime. All of it is bad for all of us, it poisons our society to be forced to participate in this.

xp and make the sentencing judge stand in the blood spray

well they botched that one... again

So fucking insane that after failing to kill her they rush her to the hospital, just ... the depravity of it all. No idea what her actual condition is now.

Meanwhile likely incoming Gov. Marsha Blackburn is saying this means we have to go back to the electric chair.

No idea how people square being against "the government" doing things like healthcare but gung ho about the government actually killing people

in this particular case... she was 18 when the murder occurred. And these days, we know more and more that an 18 year old is not an adult, the brain is not fully developed until like 25 or something. (And that's before we even take into account the trauma of her early life etc.)

The crime was pretty heinous, but at this point you think they would just change the sentence to life imprisonment... however long that lasts...

in this particular case...

But the arguments against the death penalty in all cases are strong enough that there should be no need to argue its merits in particular cases. Killing people convicted of crimes serves no legitimate interests of the state.

Agreed

The crime was terrible, I actually did some of the first-day reporting on it because I was a newbie reporter on weekend duty when the story broke. I understand why people are still fixated on some of its ghoulish elements. But she was literally a kid, and from a severely abusive childhood and family background, which is why she'd landed in Job Corps in the first place. And anyway, right, capital punishment is a moral stain on any society that practices it. Opposing it for me isn't mostly about having mercy on people who did terrible things, it's about not implicating the rest of us in still more terrible things.

name the top 10 reasons the death penalty should be abolished (again)

there are so fucking many, all of them laid out in this thread many times

one that only i bring up here is that a HUGE amount of people on death row are exonerated, either before or after they're murdered by the state. it is not a trivial number, it is a large percentage of them. even when the death penalty goes "well" (ie doesn't result in horrific torture but instead a nice clean murder), about 5% of the people being executed are innocent. oops!!!?

lovely to see the term "attempted execution" in the news

5% of the people in executions (on the state's side) should be murdered, just to even things out

(fun thing for me recently was finding new documentation on my (late) father's corrupt testimony to help put away a death penalty victim in florida in the mid-80s, shortly after i was born. i always wondered why we moved away from florida when i was 3. it was because my dad was a liar and he lied in order to try to get his job back as a forensic scientist giving testimony in capital punishment cases, after losing his job for doing drugs on the job)

abolish the police, abolish capital punishment, stop listening to confident burly white men who truly yearn for the apocalypse

seriously - fuck all these people who do it

looks like Christa Pike is conscious and speaking again, but her arms are fucked up

My death penalty opposition was clouded by the latest story about the immigration court with unaccompanied minors from a few weeks ago.

I grew up thirty minutes from Huntsville, where all of the executions in Texas are carried out. I've been to the prison museum there where Ol' Sparky the electric chair is on display. My father was in charge of facilities at the Huntsville Unit when I was a kid, later on he was in charge of the facilities at all of the units in the area.

Needless to say, I grew up around all of this and as a kid and into early college I was all for the death penalty. My dad had to be on site when an execution was carried out in case there was a maintenance issue while people were there. He didn't witness the executions and it wasn't that he would need to work on the equipment that carried out the penalty, think more along the lines of a water main happens to burst or whatever.

At the time, executions were carried out at midnight. When I was little, I would occasionally see my dad getting dressed up around my bedtime and I'd ask what was going on? "Oh, they're going to kill another one of those sons of bitches tonight."

Eventually I grew up and came to my own conclusions. It's barbaric, it's racist, it's not effective, it erases the possibility of proving innocence after the fact, and if you're set on punishing someone it's "better" to let them live a long life in the clink. What's happening now with the public executions is awful, but is it worse to hide it out of sight? If people see it, how can they ignore it? It shows the evil of the Pentagon, but I don't know that broadcasting it makes a massive difference. It is repulsive and it makes me sick. People in favor of the death penalty should be forced to watch it.